


The Letter (Ch11)

by CarmillaCarmine



Series: The Memoirs of Dr. John H. Watson [13]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Torture, Letters, London, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Reminiscing, Reunions, Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach, Sherlock hurt for those two years just as much as John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-07 18:17:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17370911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarmillaCarmine/pseuds/CarmillaCarmine
Summary: Sherlock's absence from London and his subsequent return were not at all what he had expected. John was not the only one hurt by the time apart.Takes place during the events of The Empty Hearse - S3 E1A play-by-play of the beginning of TEH from Sherlock’s POV





	1. The Note

**Author's Note:**

> Part 11 of "deleted scenes" style fic [The Memoirs of Dr. John H. Watson](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1158497)  
> All parts can be read as stand-alone stories but read better together as one story. The Memoirs fit in between or during episodes of the Sherlock TV show. Fix-it series of fics when the show stays the same.

 

  

_Sherlock,_  

 _This is my note. That’s what people do, as you once told me._  

 _There are many things I’ve never had a chance to tell you and now I’ll never will. My therapist told me once to write a blog about what happens to me. Something happened to me soon after that. Someone happened._  

 _Like a whirlwind, you took me with you and spun my life around, splashing colour, laughter and annoying comments everywhere. Every day had had a meaning then, even if it was_ _spent pulling_ _my hair out while playing Cluedo. What I wouldn’t give for one more game now, one more adventure, even one more day spent aimlessly at home with you out of your mind from boredom. I gave you my heart_ _,_ _you know. I’ve never told you. And_ _I have one more thing left to give. My life._  

 _Maybe if I had never_ _met_ _you, I would now be able lead the life I had imagined for myself. Quiet, mundane and_ _norm_ _a_ _l_ _. Maybe with a girlfriend, even a wife. But once I tasted the danger with you, a different kind of danger than the war gave me, I_ _stopped_ _looking for a normal life. I didn’t want that anymore. I still don’t._  

 _I will never be able to forget the little time we spent together. Because on a grand scale of things, our friendship was just a flicker. The last flicker of a dying star that had been your life. During that one flicker, we somehow managed to fit_ _in_ _a whole life worth living. You’d laugh at me for that, for anything poetic I wrote. You always used to do that. I didn’t care because I was there to hear the sound._ _I’d die to hear that_ _laughter_ _a_ _gain now._  

 _I hope wherever you are, you’ll know that I’m unable to walk the same streets we_ _had_ _walked together anymore, eat at the same places, live on the same planet._  

 _I’m coming to join you. And maybe, just maybe, you can take me for one more ridiculous adventure._  

 ~~_Love_ ~~ _Sincerely yours,_  

_John_

 

 

Sherlock had business to deal with in Tibet, New Delhi, Hamburg... but it was when he was in Greece that everything changed.  

The hotel he was staying at was small; the smell of damp and the scent of the sea nearby were filling the room. Sherlock was planning his upcoming trip to Serbia where the last piece of the Moriarty puzzle lay, when an envelope slid underneath his door. It was easy enough to deduce that Mycroft had tracked him down but only upon opening the letter did he realize the gravity of the reason he did so.  

The rush of fear, concern and an array of other emotions he refused to waste time identifying, flooded his system. The xeroxed letter in his hand blurred and shook.  It took him a moment to realise it was his hand that was shaking and it was the moisture in his eyes that blurred the text.  

Sherlock’s back hit the whitewashed wall and he slid to the floor, taking deep, calming breaths to contain the pain behind his sternum. 

John was in danger. From himself. 

Sherlock admitted to himself that he might have taken John’s proclivity towards waiting for him for granted just a bit. He had never done it when he had been still living with his blogger. He asked himself every day why John would choose to stay with him for as long as he had. But once he was the one forced to leave his flatmate, he assumed John would either follow him or wait, just like he had done throughout their friendship, ever since they met.  

As always, he had been right. Unfortunately, John refused to wait this time and decided to follow him instead. 

 Sherlock held the letter tightly in his hand and lifted the crumpled paper to his nose. It smelled of copy ink, not at all of the man who wrote it. It was not the smell he wanted to invade his senses. It was not the smell of John Watson. Not the smell of John’s hair when he came out of the shower, not the smell of John’s sun-kissed face when he came back from shopping in July’s heat, not the smell of John’s neck after he came back home drenched from the rain and in desperate need of hot tea. He missed the smell of John Watson. 

John had saved him when they met. Sherlock had hoped he wouldn’t have to divulge to John what a mess he had made of his life before he met him. Why he had been looking for a new place to stay and why his brother had insisted he had to find a flatmate who could call an ambulance at any time of day or night. As luck would have it, he had found a doctor, someone substantially better than his brother had ever expected him to find.  

Over the last year and a half, Sherlock had spent many long and lonely nights thinking about John, about their life and about everything he had kept from him. Sherlock was in no way more inclined to divulge all his dark secrets to him now than he had before. However, the moment they were back together again, there would be no more looming secrets. He would tell John Watson that he had saved him from himself. And now that his flatmate needed the same, Sherlock would come and try be the man John had already thought he had been throughout their time together. 

A rush of adrenaline at the thought caused him to bolt upright and start packing hurriedly. Getting back to London immediately became crucial. From the clothes line on the tiny balcony, he took his still-damp clothes and threw them in his backpack. He travelled light and it wasn’t glamorous, with only a few necessities in his backpack which made the packing fast and efficient. 

 _You can’t come back. Not yet._  

A voice of reason whispered in his head. A voice that had the sound and tone of an army doctor he used to know. The voice was correct, he had one more mission to complete. He had listened to that familiar yet disembodied voice often. It had saved him from many difficult situations during the months of arduous undercover work in various countries.  

Sherlock took out the tiny picture he kept in his shirt pocket and straightened the worn-out corner with his fingertips. 

“Just this one and I’m coming back, I promise,” he put the picture back where it belonged, as close to his heart as possible. He couldn’t risk coming back to London without making sure all threads of the spider’s web were efficiently cut. Never again would he risk putting John Watson in danger. Not the way he had when he had stood on the roof at Bart’s. Cold sweat broke on his body at the memory of the moment when he had found out there had been a gun pointed at an unaware John. 

He continued packing with resolve. Serbia remained his destination.  

Within days, he was washing his hands, heavily stained in blood, in a sink of a dingy hostel. Only some of the blood was his, maybe more than he wanted but it was not important. It was almost over. The image of John smiling at him appeared in his mind’s eye. Sherlock had to look presentable, he thought as he scrubbed his hands raw. He looked in the broken mirror above the sink and saw an exhausted and sad man missing home. He desperately needed a haircut as well. The long strands of his dark hair had lost their curly bounce and were dry and broken, much like he felt he was himself.  

“I’m coming back soon,” he said to the picture tucked into the old wooden frame of the mirror.  

- 

The elation caused by the impending possibility of his return to London, must have made Sherlock lose his edge because upon breaking into one last Serbian facility, he had been captured. 

He refused to divulge why he had been on the premises despite the torture inflicted on him by his captors. Within six days, he managed to escape. He hadn’t been hurt enough to prevent him from running through the woods. However, the sleep deprivation he endured took a toll on his senses and led to his subsequent recapture. This time they chained him to the wall by his arms and the new torture made him miss the fists in the face from before. 

- 

The rattle of the chains digging into Sherlock’s wrists made his ears ring. It was possible that the overabundance of blows to the head had done that, he wasn’t sure. He fought to focus his mind on his surroundings and gather crucial intelligence. He could still feel the pain caused by the pipe that had connected with and possibly broken several of his ribs hours ago. 

Sherlock’s body was damaged, bloodied and hurting. But he could endure the physical pain, he had gotten used to it after weeks spent in this hell and learned to deal with it. With each day, the torture became more severe, forcing him to seek methods that would ensure at least his psychological survival.  

He feigned unconsciousness when he hid his mind in order to prevent affecting it with the bruising his ‘transport’ received.   

It took him two days to find the place in his mind palace where he could hide. The same place he made good use of as a teenager. Redbeard greeted him the first time he had entered into the calming room with blue walls after so many years.  

Soon after, an armchair appeared in the centre of the room and on it a wet-haired, dressing-gown-clad John, reading a newspaper.  

Routines.  

He had always tried keeping routines but without being predictable. Routines kept him collected, kept his sanity intact. Or at least he hoped they would this time.  

Like arms on a non-existent in the room clock, his guards and interrogators moved in a discernible pattern. By their sleeves and the crumbs on their clothing, he could ascertain what they had eaten prior to coming to engage with him, therefore he knew which mealtime had just passed, ergo, he knew the approximate time of the day.  

He scheduled his visits to the blue room accordingly, to keep a routine. He was unable to extract much data during the most severe torture practices so he hid in the room for deep analysis. As hard as he tried to control the pain in his body, he was unable to completely detach himself from it when he stepped out of the blue room.  

Time spent in the mind palace under strain had to be calculated properly in order to make the coming out of it the least shocking to his mind. The sudden flood of pain burst in the receptors and his head pounded for hours afterwards, not to mention the parts of his body that had been subjected to the ideas of sick men’s minds. Broken bones were the worst due to their long healing process. The knife wound in his thigh was almost healed and by the way the way he could move his leg, he could tell the knife had not done damage to the nerves.  

The fear of getting trapped in the blue room permanently by accident made Sherlock come back to reality. Staying hidden in his mind palace was dangerously tempting, it felt incredibly peaceful and he knew it was risky to hide there for longer periods of time. The time he spent in there helped him focus. He gathered as much information as was humanly possible to on his assailants and disappeared into the blue room to analyse it.  

The physical torture was just part of his pain. John was in danger and knowing that that danger came from himself hurt too. Making sure John was safe from this threat made his self-appointed mission of dismantling Moriarty’s network possible. He didn’t dare think that John could harm himself before Sherlock came back. He couldn’t think of it now either. The painful thought threatened to incapacitate him further. He could not think of a world without John Watson.     

It took Sherlock weeks to find out the schedules of the sadistic guards but with that information to hand it had been easy. With the time on his hands to collect sufficient data to deduce the affair going on between the torturer's wife and the coffin maker, he was getting closer to his imminent escape.  

It took Mycroft months to find him, and he came when Sherlock was getting out on his own anyway. Sherlock longed for the day he’d be on his way to London. To John. That day finally arrived.   

Upon his return Sherlock would have to talk to John in earnest. John had the right to know what Sherlock had learned while in isolation about the feelings he had for his flatmate. That, during the time away, he realised that he had relied on John a lot more than he let himself previously believe; that life without John by his side proved to be unbearable. It would be hard to divulge all that. However, he was certain that he and John could be something more. In order to pursue that wonderful concept, John had to be aware of the multitude of feelings bubbling inside him every time his mind drifted to his flatmate, his partner in life... his John Watson. Sherlock should tell him that he wanted, he wished... no, he  _hoped_ for them to be together again, as a unit.  

Just the two of them against the world. 

 

Sherlock came out from his musings and with a voice a lot quieter than the rattle of his chains, he whispered to one of his torturers.  

“You used to work in the navy where you had an unhappy love affair. The electricity isn’t working in your bathroom. Your wife is sleeping with your next-door neighbour,” then he glimpsed the tips of the idiot’s shoes again. “No, the coffin maker.” And for his ticket home, he added. “If you go home now, you’ll catch them at it.” 

His throat was raw, but he managed to whisper the words clearly enough to be understood. The furious and confused man left in a hurry, leaving him to make use of the time window before the next one was due to arrive in his place. He took a shallow breath as a deep one would hurt his ribs and gathered his strength for what was to become his escape. 

Then he heard a familiar voice speaking the language he had grown to despise. Of course, his brother couldn’t have waited for Sherlock to come back on his own instead of meddling in his business. How predictable. Mycroft had to have his fingers in all the possible pies.  

The moment Mycroft helped him to get rid of the shackles, Sherlock collapsed on the floor, his legs refusing to hold him upright. Refusing to accept any more help, he pulled himself up on the wall just to inadvertently lean on his brother for support. His annoyance at Mycroft’s presence dwindled as he had to admit to himself that he was hardly in any shape to escape on his own. 

They shuffled through the corridors together. Mycroft playing his role and Sherlock, dressed in clothes his brother brought for him, didn’t have to put his acting skills to use. Mycroft barked orders right and left and eventually got them out of the facility.  

The noise of the whirling blades outside made Sherlock’s head pound, the wind created by them forcing him to hold onto his brother more than he cared to admit. Sherlock finally let himself close his eyes and lose his grip on reality when he was covered with a blanket while seated in a cramped space in the noisy helicopter. 

His brother tried to insist on keeping Sherlock a couple of days in a clinic in Serbia. However, Sherlock could not stand to delay one more day, one more hour before heading home.  

With a sigh and an exaggerated eye-roll, Mycroft arranged for a plane and for medical care to be administered during the flight. On the airplane, Sherlock had been patched, given antibiotics, his shoulder put back in its socket and his ribs bandaged. All he needed was a shave. 

Sitting on a brown leather chair in the aircraft, Sherlock was handed a set of pills. He swallowed two Tramadol pills with sips of gloriously cold glass of water. Etoricoxib and Diazepam followed suit. He looked at Mycroft knowingly and received an I’ll-be-watching-you glare. No Morphine for him, apparently. Sherlock drifted off to sleep for the remaining flight time.  

 


	2. The Return

Mycroft, quite effectively Sherlock would have to agree, cleared Sherlock’s name before he ventured to find him. That would prove very convenient once he was ready to reveal himself to the world as not dead. 

His brother avoided people in his house as much as possible, therefore his office had to do for a change of bandages and a shave. Even a shirt two sizes bigger than before had been picked out appropriately for him. Once he got dressed, he wondered what John would think of his physical change. Then he thought of the bruises, scars and still healing cuts on his body and dismissed the thought process from his mind completely. 

Quite appropriate for a reunion, the shirt was white, it wouldn’t create much contrast with his pallor due to immense loss of blood during the torture. John would notice anyway, he was a doctor. He would look closely at him and notice, wouldn’t he? 

\- 

“There’s going to be a terrorist strike on London, a big one.” Sherlock faintly heard the word spoken to him as his head was far ahead of the matter. 

Underground terror cell. Oh Mycroft, please. The moment Sherlock heard his brother’s voice uttering those words, he knew that it had been a pretense to get him back to London. Mycroft needed a plausible reason to employ government resources to find him. It was the only way for Sherlock to come back to John, to feel every quiver of his beating heart. 

“And what about John Watson?” 

“John?” Mycroft feigned confusion. 

“Hmm. Have you seen him?” Sherlock was striving for nonchalance but every muscle in his body was tensed to run, to jump, to crawl towards John Watson. 

“Oh yes, we meet up every Friday for fish and chips,” Mycroft shouldn’t try to be funny, it wasn’t his area. “I’ve kept a weather eye on him, of course. We haven’t been in touch at all to prepare him.” His brother’s stare conveyed slight worry. Why would John have to be prepared? 

“No,” Sherlock uttered as he looked at John’s picture in the folder that had been handed to him. Was that a moustache? Oh god. “We’ll have to get rid of that.” 

“We?” 

“He looks ancient. I can’t be seen to be wandering around with an old man.” 

Mycroft waited until they were alone in the room before his expression became impossibly more serious. 

“Here,” an envelope appeared in Sherlock’s palm, “Lestrade found him drunk with this in his hand. Since it was addressed to you, he thought I should keep it.” 

Sherlock accepted the envelope, knowing well that this was the original letter, the copy of which he had read months ago. This is why I had to come back sooner. Sherlock put the envelope in the left inner pocket of his suit jacket. Mycroft would notice that it was as close to his heart as it was physically possible but had the good taste not to comment. He kept his face in check even though his heart started a staccato rhythm due to the topic of the conversation. 

“I think I’ll surprise John. He’ll be delighted,” Sherlock imagined John sitting in his chair in the sitting room of 221B, much the same way he had in his blue room for the weeks following his capture. Sherlock would make tea and tell him everything that had been brewing inside him for so long. Everything he had finally started to understand. The riddle his existence had become since John marched into it with his military gait and took more space that his small frame suggested he could. There was only one possible outcome of this riddle. John and him. Together. 

“You think so?” Mycroft asked, his eyebrows raised. It didn’t sound right. 

“Hmm, pop into Baker Street, who knows, jump out of a cake,” he tried to mask the way his body broke out in a cold sweat at Mycroft’s tone of voice. With a silly joke mentioning his brother’s favourite guilty pleasure, he tried to distract his brother from his noticing his panicked reaction. 

“Baker Street? He isn’t there anymore,” those words uttered by Mycroft gave Sherlock a start. He didn’t expect things to change. He didn’t have the frame of mind to think about how things could change and this information knocked the breath out of him. “Why would he be? It’s been two years. He’s got on with his life.” 

“What life? I’ve been away.” Sherlock hid the dread in his voice quite well but not well enough for Mycroft not to hear it. 

Sherlock somehow assumed that if John was his whole life, he had to be John’s. Apparently, he had been grossly mistaken. He wanted to contact John so many times over the years but by doing that he might have put him in danger. That would have been unacceptable. The danger had been annihilated, the last piece of Moriarty’s puzzle had been solved and now he had to think ahead. Living in the past had never served him well. 

\- 

Sherlock breathed the smog of London from the rooftops to get ready for a meeting with John. After extracting information about John’s whereabouts from Mycroft, Sherlock couldn’t help thinking about the awful moustache. Surprising John during dinner was an excellent idea, the restaurant might be even better for his confessions than 221B would, if he could bring himself to voice them. 

Sherlock stood on the roof, re-reading John’s letter and massaging his sternum. He was relieved that John hadn’t hurt himself after all. The fact that he even considered ending his life was weighing heavily on Sherlock. Putting himself in John’s place, he realised it would have made a lot of sense. 

However, soon enough John would find out that Sherlock had not died. John was a man logical enough to see Sherlock’s rationale behind his actions and understand why he couldn't have been contacted over the two-year period. An embrace would follow and all would be as it should. 

Looking at London from above its streets, Sherlock recalled how the whole elaborate plan of destroying Moriarty had been put in motion. 

It had been a couple of weeks before Moriarty’s trial when Sherlock had received a cryptic text from his brother. They’d met at Mycroft’s office and discussed the details of Sherlock’s demise as the only option to out-play the consulting criminal. 

“What an idiotic idea. I expected more of you, brother.” Sherlock had initially derided. Upon drafting the scheme of Moriarty’s plan and the possible solutions for Sherlock to stay alive after it came to fruition, Sherlock had finally been convinced. 

The one condition he’d made was to make sure John was safe. John, and a few selected people in his life. 

During the weeks leading up to the trial, Sherlock had wanted to spend as much time as possible with John. Before he had to leave, he wanted to cement their close friendship that they hadn't the courage to name yet. Initially, he’d assumed that he would be gone several weeks, maybe months, but he had to admit that he had underestimated the vastness of Moriarty’s network. 

That day in court, Sherlock had been prepared to put on a show to entice the judges to throw him out. He had to make Moriarty believe he was winning from the very beginning, that nothing and no one would be able to stop him. It had been the first step towards his self-destruction and he had been unable to tell John about it.


	3. The Reveal

 

Sherlock arrived on Marylebone Road and had to applaud John for an excellent choice of venue. Ready to return to being Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, he strode inside.

The nonchalance gracing Sherlock’s features evaporated like a cheap cologne the moment he entered The Landmark and saw John for the first time in two years. He had imagined him so many times, remembering every tiny detail of his John Watson. 

The man he saw in the restaurant looked very different. More...real. What a stupid line of thought, of course John was more real than he had been in Sherlock’s head. And clearly waiting for his date. He was dressed to the nines which meant he was trying to impress. Judging by the tic in his knee to the tension in his arms, he was also stressed. The nearly empty wine glass on the table suggested that John was about to do something he might regret later. Sherlock realised he had to move fast. There was no time to lose.

His heartbeat a tattoo in his chest, he promptly devised a new plan of approaching John. A simple “Hi” would not suffice. A little disguise would add a nice flair to the moment. He swirled around the room compiling items for his disguise as he imagined John’s reaction at seeing him. He would embrace him, maybe cry a little – sentiment but hopefully, a heart attack could be avoided. Fainting would be possible, even probable. But Sherlock would catch him, hold him and tell him that it would be all right now, that he was back for good. There were the two of them together again. The crime solving duo back in action. The country needed them and they had to deliver. 

“Oh, it’s not really my area” John used the same phrase Sherlock had the same day they had met and yet he still hadn’t recognized him. However, his subconscious had done it for him hence his word choice. John’s date was observing the conversation, her sharp eyes registering more than a boring girlfriend should. She was also impeccably dressed, another clear sign than this was not an ordinary evening out.

“Interesting thing, a tuxedo. Lends distinction to friends and anonymity to waiters,” Sherlocks annoyance with John’s poor observation skills led him to the final reveal.  _Seri_ _ously, how much worse could he have gotten at deductions over a_ _two-year_ _period?_

The recognition on John’s face turned into shock and anger. He looked at his female companion as if to make sure that she was seeing Sherlock as well. Evidently, John’s mind had played tricks on him when Sherlock had been gone. Fascinating. He stored the information for future pondering. 

Sherlock’s demeanour changed completely when John got up from his chair, with hands balled into fists.

“Well, the short version: not dead,” he said striving for nonchalance but the pain he saw painted on John’s face made his heart ache. He’d seen John injured before but his face had never showed agony so palpable, surely the whole restaurant felt it. 

_Oh... What had I done to you, John?_

The thought hit him suddenly, just when John’s expression changed into a furious glower.

“How could you do that?” John’s voice barely came out through his constricted throat. Sherlock wanted to tell him that he had to, that it was for his own safety. That he thought about John every day, every night, every hour away from him but he couldn’t. Instead he made a stupid joke in hopes he could make John smile at him again. He had yearned to see that smile for so long now, he was giddy in his silliness to be graced by it again. 

Alas, Sherlock found himself dragged through the restaurant in an embrace completely different to the one he had imagined. Excruciating pain exploded in the still-raw wounds on his back as he hit the floor, John’s fury not lost on him nor anyone else in the restaurant.

Thankfully, his suit jacket was black, the blood which certainly soaked through the bandages should not be visible on it. Currently, that was of the least importance.

The goal was to make John understand, forgive and... smile. He wanted to try until he succeeded. In the next restaurant maybe.

“You have missed this, admit it. The thrill of the chase, the blood pumping through your veins, just the two of us against the rest of the world.” Yet another try not met with the reception anticipated. As brilliant ideas go, this wasn’t one of them.

Overall, the welcome he received from his friend was not what he had anticipated. Neither was his split lip, nor his bloody nose. 

How could John be so predictable at one time, yet manage to surprise him nonetheless so completely? It had happened before, but Sherlock was fairly certain John would be happy to see him. He had never been so distraught over being wrong. 

-

The cold evening wind blew his hair but did nothing to cool his mind as Sherlock looked at the taxi taking John away from him. John and his girlfriend.

Wary. Suspicious. Yes, those were his feelings, not jealousy, or at least he tried to tell himself that as he analysed John’s choice of a woman. A clever nurse, only child, short sighted, a guardian, a linguist, a romantic, cat lover, wears size 12, bakes bread, disillusioned. Everything seemed to be fine except that she was a liar.

By the way she refused wine in the restaurant, she was also cautious. Which meant she didn’t want to get intimate with John tonight or at least do so while being intoxicated. Sherlock shook his head to rid it of the image that crept in uninvited. 

He needed John’s woman on his side though and she did promise to talk John around. He had to try and deal with John’s girlfriend the way John would wish him to, as opposed to how he used to do it in the past. Apparently, he had hurt John more than he anticipated he had, and he refused to make matters worse with John’s new girlfriend who he apparently wanted to marry. A groan of pain left his lips involuntarily.

Sherlock might not know human nature well enough to explain John’s reaction to his reveal, but he knew himself enough to know he felt hurt. Seeing John with someone else, going home in a taxi with someone else made his insides hurt more than a hot poker to the ribs. And he knew damn well how that one felt too. The only thing that made the loneliness of the last two years possible to endure was the prospect of coming back to John. He felt now like he was losing him... no, he had lost him already. Was that how had John felt for two years? 

_No, please let me through. He’s my friend_. 

John’s broken voice from the moment Sherlock lay on the pavement with a squash ball under his armpit invaded his mind. What happened to John to change him from the distraught friend to someone who hated him? Was that because he had left? Because he had lied? Did John not miss him anymore? 

Sherlock shot his hand out to steady himself on a brick wall as he momentarily lost his balance. He didn’t feel right. The freshly opened wounds on his back coupled with a bleeding nose were taking a toll on his not yet recovered body.  He had to move before the bandages got stuck to his bleeding back.

He should go say hello to Molly and Lestrade. Even though his back wound needed more time until he was fully healed, he’d rather go back to Baker Street than stay one more night at his brother’s house. 

Mrs. Hudson should be home in the evening and Sherlock could use some tea and biscuits in the morning and a warm smile from the woman who had been like a second mother to him.

John was in his heart and in his head for two years and coming back to London hadn’t changed that. During his time away, John had become a constant voice telling him what was appropriate and what he should pay attention to in social situations. That was the John Watson he remembered, the memory he cherished for two years. But the man who beat him the first moment that he laid his eyes on him was not the same man he remembered. John always had a short fuse but he had never hurt him. A lot more had changed during his absence that he had imagined.

John’s voice in his head changed accordingly. The subtle remarks were gone and in their place scolding and snickering appeared. He tried to silence them but even in Molly’s and Lestrade’s company they still haunted him. 

John wasn’t really in the picture anymore. 

The loss hurt more than the two years apart. That time had been necessary. Now, he was so close, in the same city and yet so far from John. More than oceans away judging by the icy cold shoulder he gave him. 

It might be entirely possible that coming back was not a good solution to the hole in his chest at all. Just the opposite. Did the world really need Sherlock Holmes any more? More importantly, did John? 

Chips. He needed to get chips. They were the best food for bad mood. 

His heart only came back to life, beating fast, when he found out that John was in danger. His very unusual girlfriend came bearing the news but he refused to ponder what her knowledge of skip code said about her. He had been given a reason to live again. 

Save John Watson. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
